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Future of Science

Update: While this project concluded in 2012, I continue to run the Future Of Science blog, capturing the latest signals from the world of science.

Invisibility cloaks. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A Facebook for genes. These were just a few of the topics I explored with a team at Institute For The Future (IFTF) on the “Future of Science.”

In addition to the research, we met with more than a dozen scientists from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Scripps Research Institute and SETI Institute to hear about their edgiest research driving transformations in science. We also had MythBusters’ Adam Savage weigh in on the future of science education.

All of their endeavors were signals supporting IFTF’s new “Future of Science” forecast, laid out in a new map titled “A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021.” The map focuses on six big stories of science that will play out over the next decade: Decrypting the Brain, Hacking Space, Massively Multiplayer Data, Sea the Future, Strange Matter, and Engineered Evolution. Those stories are emerging from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research.

The map is under a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.